- Departament de Filologia Catalana
Edifici B
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Bellaterra 08193
- about my work: http://filcat.uab.cat/clt/Gavarro/gavarro.html/Welcome.html
and my research group: http://www.imxprs.com/free/apl/apl-websiteedit
This book presents new work on how Merge and formal features, two Basic factors in the Minimalist program, should determine the syntactic computation of natural language. Merge combines similar objects into more complex ones. Formal... more
This book presents new work on how Merge and formal features, two Basic factors in the Minimalist program, should determine the syntactic computation of natural language. Merge combines similar objects into more complex ones. Formal features establish dependencies within objects. This book examines the intricate ways in which these two factors interact to generate well-formed derivations in natural language. It is divided into two parts concerned with formal features and interpretable features — a subset of formal features. The book combines grammatical theory with the analysis of data drawn form a wide range of languages, both in the adult grammar and in first language acquisition. The mechanisms at work in linguistic computation are considered in relation to a variety of linguistic phenomena, including A-binding, A'-dependencies and reconstruction, agreement, word order, adjuncts, pronouns, and complementizers.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
Greek and Spanish are two languages that display a similar subject distribution with unergative/unaccusative verbs, but different word orders with focused subjects (SV in Greek and VS in Spanish). Here we consider subject–verb word order... more
Greek and Spanish are two languages that display a similar subject distribution with unergative/unaccusative verbs, but different word orders with focused subjects (SV in Greek and VS in Spanish). Here we consider subject–verb word order in second language (L2) Greek and L2 Spanish in order to test the Interface Hypothesis (IH). To this end, we report a word-order selection task, with a Greek and a Spanish version. The two versions of the task were administered to L2 intermediate and advanced learners and native speakers of Greek and Spanish. The results show that the first language (L1) Spanish learners of Greek approximated more closely native word orders than the L1 Greek learners of Spanish. For the Spanish learners of Greek, the advanced group performed at ceiling, while the intermediate group performed native-like only with unergatives in neutral and direct interrogative subject-focused contexts. On the other hand, for the Greek learners of Spanish, the intermediate group failed in all contexts, while the advanced group performed native-like with unaccusatives in neutral contexts. This asymmetry between L2 Greek and L2 Spanish reveals that the L1–L2 combination determines the learners’ performance, and this is unexpected under the IH.
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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD hereafter) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by deficits in communicative and social skills. The vast majority of research on language in ASD has focused on pragmatic difficulties, while less is... more
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD hereafter) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by deficits in communicative and social skills. The vast majority of research on language in ASD has focused on pragmatic difficulties, while less is known about structural aspects of language in this population. Work on syntax and phonology is not only sparse, but the heterogeneity in these grammatical domains has moreover led to conflicting reports that they are either intact or impaired. More remains to be understood about variations in grammatical profiles in ASD, as well as the relation of grammar to other cognitive abilities. The body of research gathered here increases our understanding of the grammatical strengths and weaknesses in ASD. The contributions carefully elucidate the relations between grammar and other areas of cognition, as well as unveil the similarities and differences of grammar in ASD compared to other conditions. The result is a volume that provides new ways to think about language and communication in ASD, and beyond, which should be of interest to both linguists and clinicians
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Comentari al llibre de Susann Fischer, 'The Catalan Clitic System: A Diachronic Perspective on its Syntax and Phonology', que segons les autores de la ressenya constitueix una bona introduccio a un tema de gran interes per als... more
Comentari al llibre de Susann Fischer, 'The Catalan Clitic System: A Diachronic Perspective on its Syntax and Phonology', que segons les autores de la ressenya constitueix una bona introduccio a un tema de gran interes per als estudis historics: la posicio dels pronoms atons en catala i en altres llengues romaniques
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Background and aims Language abilities vary greatly across children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In the present study, we investigate passive sentence comprehension, which has been underexplored among individuals with autism... more
Background and aims Language abilities vary greatly across children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In the present study, we investigate passive sentence comprehension, which has been underexplored among individuals with autism spectrum disorders and found to be delayed among other clinical populations. This study is the first to assess grammatical comprehension among Danish-speaking adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Methods Fifteen Danish-speaking adolescents with autism (mean age: 14.9 years; age range: 13–18 years) participated in a picture selection task assessing comprehension of passive sentences relative to active sentences. We compared our findings for adolescents with autism spectrum disorders to those of 15 typically developing Danish-speaking adolescents matched for age and nonverbal reasoning as measured by the Matrix subtest of the WISC-IV/WAIS-IV. We also analyzed associations between passive comprehension and nonverbal reasoning. Results The results sh...
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Aquesta tesi es el resultat de la primera investigacio extensa en l'adquisicio de les passives agentives en dues varietats de catala: el catala central i el mallorqui. L'adquisicio de passives per part dels nens mostra un retard... more
Aquesta tesi es el resultat de la primera investigacio extensa en l'adquisicio de les passives agentives en dues varietats de catala: el catala central i el mallorqui. L'adquisicio de passives per part dels nens mostra un retard en diverses llengues, especialment aquelles en que la passiva verbal i l'adjectiva no son homofones. En primer lloc presento un estudi de dades espontanies tant en adults com en nens per veure la frequencia dels diferents tipus de passives (perifrastica, adjectiva i pronominal) en catala. Mitjancant una tasca d'aparellament d'imatges i frases vaig realitzar un primer experiment per esbrinar l'adquisicio de passives agentives en catala. Com que en catala mallorqui s'utilitza la mateixa preposicio en les passives llargues i en els nominals agentius vaig fer un segon experiment per veure la possible facilitacio en la comprensio de les formes passives llargues en tenir la mateixa preposicio. La preposicio pero, no va tenir cap efecte ...
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En aquest article presentem uns quants arguments a favor de la caracterització funcional de les perífrasis verbals romàniques d’interpretació modal i aspectual. Tot seguint l’anàlisi exclusivament funcional d’aquestes perífrasis (Cinque... more
En aquest article presentem uns quants arguments a favor de la caracterització funcional de les perífrasis verbals romàniques d’interpretació modal i aspectual. Tot seguint l’anàlisi exclusivament funcional d’aquestes perífrasis (Cinque 2000), ens fixem en dades provinents de l’adquisició i de l’agramatisme en les llengües romàniques. Pel que fa a l’adquisició, els errors en la interpretació de complexos verbals funcionals, que no es donen amb els complexos de verbs primaris, indiquen una divisió fonamental entre les dues classes de verbs; d’altra banda, els errors en l’ordre de paraules trobats en el francès infantil indiquen la mateixa divisió, i corroboren una anàlisi funcional de la primera classe. Pel que fa a l’agramatisme, l’observació dels corpus publicats del francès i de l’italià demostra que els pacients tenen dificultats amb modals i auxiliars, però no amb verbs primaris, en consonància amb la disrupció de les projeccions més altes de l’arbre sintàctic – d’acord amb la h...
Encara que hi ha molts treballs sobre l'adquisicio dels clitics de tercera persona, n’hi ha pocs sobre altres clitics. Aqui ens centrem en l'adquisicio dels clitics de primera/segona persona, i avaluem dues hipotesis: el Principi... more
Encara que hi ha molts treballs sobre l'adquisicio dels clitics de tercera persona, n’hi ha pocs sobre altres clitics. Aqui ens centrem en l'adquisicio dels clitics de primera/segona persona, i avaluem dues hipotesis: el Principi de Comprovacio Unica (Wexler 1998, Gavarro et al. 2010) i la teoria de la complexitat (Tuller et al. 2011). Modificant les tasques de Silva 2008 i Rafel 2013, hem dissenyat una nova tasca d'elicitacio i hem testat un grup de 45 nens (2–4 anys). Els resultats mostren unes taxes d’omissio de clitic molt baixes, que contrasten amb l'omissio dels clitics de tercera persona en frances i en catala i donen suport a la primera hipotesi.
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ABSTRACT In English, the sentence Mary didn’t eat pizza or sushi is assigned the neither interpretation (both disjuncts must be false). In Mandarin Chinese, the equivalent sentence is assigned the at least one interpretation (at least one... more
ABSTRACT In English, the sentence Mary didn’t eat pizza or sushi is assigned the neither interpretation (both disjuncts must be false). In Mandarin Chinese, the equivalent sentence is assigned the at least one interpretation (at least one disjunct must be false). The cross-linguistic variation in the interpretation of negative sentences with disjunction has been attributed to the Disjunction Parameter. On one value of this lexical parameter, disjunction is a Positive Polarity Item (+PPI). On the other value, disjunction is not a Positive Polarity Item (-PPI). According to the Semantic Subset Principle (SSP), all child language learners are predicted to initially assign the neither interpretation to negative disjunctive sentences, for reasons of language learnability. The present study investigates the interpretation of negative sentences with disjunction in Catalan. The findings confirm that disjunction is +PPI for adults; children show a bimodal distribution. For some children, disjunction is -PPI, as predicted by the SSP. However, some children adopt the adult +PPI value of the Disjunction Parameter. Children’s level of linguistic maturity, as measured by a sentence repetition task, was correlated with their judgments about negative sentences with disjunction such that children with lower scores tended to adopt the -PPI value. To explain the relatively early parameter resetting by some Catalan-speaking children, as compared to children acquiring other languages where disjunction is +PPI, we discuss the possible “blocking effect” of an alternative lexical expression in Catalan, which unambiguously conveys the neither interpretation.
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In this paper we investigate if there is a connection between the acceptance of non-culmination in child language and a seemingly similar phenomenon in certain adult languages. In Mandarin, among other languages, adults accept... more
In this paper we investigate if there is a connection between the acceptance of non-culmination in child language and a seemingly similar phenomenon in certain adult languages. In Mandarin, among other languages, adults accept telic-perfective clauses for non-culminating situations. The types of verbs that allow such readings are referred to as non-culminating accomplishments. Recently, novel developments in semantic theory have established that subject type plays a role in the acceptance of non-culmination in these languages. According to the Agent Control hypothesis (Demirdache & Martin 2015), denying the result as encoded by such accomplishment verbs is easier when the subject’s referent is an intentional Agent than when it is an inanimate Cause. Our study revisits non-target-like acceptance of non-culmination in learners by asking: does non-culmination in child language reflect the same cause as non-culmination in languages like Mandarin?
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The goal of the present study is to test the agrammatic comprehension of clitic left dislocation and contrastive focus in Catalan, in order to evaluate the Generalised Minimality hypothesis of Grillo (2009). According to this hypothesis,... more
The goal of the present study is to test the agrammatic comprehension of clitic left dislocation and contrastive focus in Catalan, in order to evaluate the Generalised Minimality hypothesis of Grillo (2009). According to this hypothesis, the comprehension deficit observed in agrammatism is the result of the underspecification of scope-discourse features giving rise to generalised intervention effects. We conducted two sentence-picture matching tasks to assess the comprehension of clitic left dislocation and contrastive focus with nine and seven Broca’s aphasic subjects, respectively, as well as control participants. The results show that the comprehension of SVO sentences and object clitics was preserved, whereas the comprehension of object dislocations and object focalisations was compromised. These findings are consistent with the analysis of the deficit as an instance of generalised intervention effects. Yet, we also examined the prediction that a relevant syntactic feature misma...
This study aims at exploring the omission/expression of subjects in L2 Spanish and L2 Greek. The distribution of subjects is examined in the context of the Interface Hypothesis (IH), which locates the difficulty of acquisition at the... more
This study aims at exploring the omission/expression of subjects in L2 Spanish and L2 Greek. The distribution of subjects is examined in the context of the Interface Hypothesis (IH), which locates the difficulty of acquisition at the syntax-pragmatics interface (Sorace & Filiaci 2006; Tsimpli & Sorace 2006) and the language combination examined is a case in point as both languages share the null subject property and yet the IH predicts delay in L2 acquisition. We also examine the predictions of Lozano’s (2016) Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis. We designed two multiple-choice tasks, one in Spanish and one in Greek, testing subjects in various pragmatic contexts. The tasks were administered to L2 intermediate and advanced learners and native speakers of Spanish and Greek. The results obtained indicate that the L2 learners were able to select the felicitous type of subjects in the appropriate contexts, although they did not always achieve native-like patterns. An asymmetry aro...
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This study examines the lexical acquisition of monolingual Catalan-speaking children from the age of 3 to 5. We used the methods of picture selection and picture naming of both nouns and verbs in order to assess the participants’... more
This study examines the lexical acquisition of monolingual Catalan-speaking children from the age of 3 to 5. We used the methods of picture selection and picture naming of both nouns and verbs in order to assess the participants’ vocabulary knowledge. The Catalan lexical task comprised 4 tasks of 32 items each. Results showed proficiency differences based on age, methodology and lexical category. Error types were also considered in the research
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Les clausules de relatiu han estat objecte d’un nombre important de treballs en el camp de la gramatica adulta, la gramatica infantil i l’afasia. Aqui emprenen el primer estudi de la comprensio de les clausules de relatiu de subjecte i... more
Les clausules de relatiu han estat objecte d’un nombre important de treballs en el camp de la gramatica adulta, la gramatica infantil i l’afasia. Aqui emprenen el primer estudi de la comprensio de les clausules de relatiu de subjecte i d’objecte en catala infantil. Repliquem un experiment dissenyat per a l’italia per Adani (2008), en concret una tasca d’identificacio d’agent, amb 33 nens parlants del catala central d’edats compreses entre els 3,5 i els 6,2 anys. L’analisi dels resultats indica que els nens assoleixen nivells adults de comprensio de les relatives de subjecte primerencament, mentre que la comprensio de les relatives d’objecte progressa pero no assoleix nivells adults fins a l’edat de 5,6 anys. Les relatives d’objecte amb subjecte postverbal majoritariament s’interpreten de forma erronia com a relatives de subjecte per a tots els grups examinats, en clar contrast amb el comportament adult.
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Els pacients afectats d’afasia de Broca no nomes pateixen deficits en la produccio del llenguatge, sino que tambe tenen dificultats en la seva comprensio. Un recent estudi s’ha centrat en la comprensio de frases actives i passives amb... more
Els pacients afectats d’afasia de Broca no nomes pateixen deficits en la produccio del llenguatge, sino que tambe tenen dificultats en la seva comprensio. Un recent estudi s’ha centrat en la comprensio de frases actives i passives amb complement agent explicit o sense ell en catala i castella, i ha establert que els afectats d’afasia de Broca entenen perfectament les frases actives, pero en canvi presenten deficits de comprensio pel que fa a les passives, tinguin o no complement agent explicit.
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Aquest estudi te l'objectiu d'investigar l'adquisicio de nocions pragmatiques del llenguatge, a traves d'una prova experimental de judicis de preferencia en relacio a la posicio del subjecte en cada context. El catala es... more
Aquest estudi te l'objectiu d'investigar l'adquisicio de nocions pragmatiques del llenguatge, a traves d'una prova experimental de judicis de preferencia en relacio a la posicio del subjecte en cada context. El catala es una llengua que marca les nocions pragmatiques de forma sintactica – tot i que tambe de forma prosodica – i presenta alteracions en el seu ordre canonic per motius de caire informatiu. Tot i tractar-se d'un aspecte prou debatut, no sembla haver-hi un consens clar respecte l'edat d'adquisicio d'aquestes alternances. Per mirar d'aportar dades a aquest debat, s'han dissenyat dos estudis experimentals a 40 nens i 21 adults
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In this paper1 an analysis is proposed for a syntactic construction produced by a Catalan-speaking girl, Lena, and exemplified in (1a) –- in contrast with the adult (1b). This child construction is subject to two surprising restrictions... more
In this paper1 an analysis is proposed for a syntactic construction produced by a Catalan-speaking girl, Lena, and exemplified in (1a) –- in contrast with the adult (1b). This child construction is subject to two surprising restrictions which will be investigated: it is always 1st person singular, and the verb is always auxiliary haver ‘have’. (1) a. M ’ he vist una pel.lícula. (Lena, 5;9) 1sCL have seen a film ‘I have seen a film.’ b. He vist una pel.lícula. I-have seen a film Catalan presents m/em/me as object clitics (either accusative or dative); they are marked for person and number (in this case 1st person singular). Clitics are standardly characterised as unaccented elements adjacent to another word, in the case of pronominal clitics to I/V. The element m in (1a) appears to be a clitic agreeing in person and number with the subject
How do we acquire language : $b does frequency in the input matter?Tendim a donar per descomptat el llenguatge fins que un dia ens toca aprendre'n un de nou. Aleshores, tot canvia radicalment. Tot i això, les coses semblen funcionar... more
How do we acquire language : $b does frequency in the input matter?Tendim a donar per descomptat el llenguatge fins que un dia ens toca aprendre'n un de nou. Aleshores, tot canvia radicalment. Tot i això, les coses semblen funcionar diferent per a la nena de la fotografia. No sap fer un nus, ni dibuixar un cercle, ni menjar sense fer un desastre, però pot aprendre, de mitjana, deu paraules noves al dia. Als 17 mesos, no pot produir ni tan sols una frase de dos mots, però un any més tard pot construir frases de moltes paraules amb poca desviació respecte al llenguatge adult. Per aquest motiu, la pregunta sobre com els nens adquireixen la seva llengua materna ha propiciat un debat teòric i una gran quantitat de treballs empírics.Tendemos a dar por hecho el lenguaje hasta que un día nos toca aprender uno de nuevo. Entonces, todo cambia radicalmente. Sin embargo, las cosas parecen funcionar diferente para la niña de la fotografia. No sabe atar un nudo, ni dibujar un círculo, ni come...
We test the comprehension of transitive sentences in very young learners of Mandarin Chinese using a combination of the weird word order paradigm with the use of pseudo-verbs and the preferential looking paradigm, replicating the... more
We test the comprehension of transitive sentences in very young learners of Mandarin Chinese using a combination of the weird word order paradigm with the use of pseudo-verbs and the preferential looking paradigm, replicating the experiment of Franck et al. (2013) on French. Seventeen typically-developing Mandarin infants (mean age: 17.4 months) participated and the same experiment was conducted with eighteen adults. The results show that hearing well-formed NP-V-NP sentences triggered infants to fixate more on a transitive scene than on a reflexive scene. In contrast, when they heard deviant NP-NP-V sequences, no such preference pattern was found, a performance pattern that is adult-like. This is at variance with some of the results from Candan et al. (2012), who only found evidence for canonical word order comprehension at almost age 3 when considering fixation time. Furthermore, within the age range tested, performance showed no effect of age or vocabulary size.
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This volume gathers fifty papers from the conference Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, GALA 2007, celebrated in Barcelona between the 6th and 8th of September, 2007. It covers the areas of syntax and phonology of child... more
This volume gathers fifty papers from the conference Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, GALA 2007, celebrated in Barcelona between the 6th and 8th of September, 2007. It covers the areas of syntax and phonology of child language from the theoretical perspective of generative grammar - the theoretical outlook which first placed language acquisition at the centre of linguistic inquiry.
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1. Merge and features: a minimalist introduction PART I FORMAL FEATURES 2. Probing Phrases, Pronouns, and Binding 3. Wh-agreement and Bounded Unbounded Movement 4. Universal 20 Without the LCA 5. What it Means (not) to Know (number)... more
1. Merge and features: a minimalist introduction PART I FORMAL FEATURES 2. Probing Phrases, Pronouns, and Binding 3. Wh-agreement and Bounded Unbounded Movement 4. Universal 20 Without the LCA 5. What it Means (not) to Know (number) Agreement 6. Number Agreement in English and Xhosa 7. Variable vs. Consistent Input: Comparehension of Plural Morphology and Verbal Agreement in Children 8. Processing Grammatical Features by Italian Children PART II INTERPRETABLE FEATURES 9. When Movement Fails to Reconstruct 10. If Non-simultaneous Spell-out Exists, This is What it can Explain 11. What Adjuncts Tell us About Case, Agreement, and Syntax in General 12. The Diversity of Dative Experiencers 13. Homogeneity and Flexibility in Temporal Modification 14. The Syntactically Well-behaved Comparative Correlative 15. Some Silent First Person Plurals 16. From Greek to Germanic: Poly-(*in)-definiteness and Weak/Strong Adjectival Inflection 17. Acquisition of Plurality in a Language Without Plurality
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Research Interests: Economics and Linguistics
Response_Data.csv: Participant responses ('correct' or 'incorrect') to sentences with quantifiers ('all', 'none', 'some', 'some...not', 'most') in 31 languages presented in the... more
Response_Data.csv: Participant responses ('correct' or 'incorrect') to sentences with quantifiers ('all', 'none', 'some', 'some...not', 'most') in 31 languages presented in the context of different visual displays. Item_Coding.csv: How sentences with quantifiers ('all', 'none', 'some', 'some...not', 'most') were coded.